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Pentagon talks about the 2008 hack that redefined U.S. cyber policy

U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn III writes in the latest issue of Foreign Policy about the 2008 hack into a military laptop he calls "the most significant breach of U.S. military computers ever."Â Lynn explains the previously classified story: two years ago, a foreign intelligence agent plugged a flash drive into a military laptop and infected a U.S. Central Command network. The military's effort to deal with the worm was dubbed Operation Buckshot Yankee.Â This event was a wake-up call; it changed U.S. cyber policy andÂ sparked the creation of the U.S. Cyber Command.Noah Shachtman of Wired wonders why a foreign spy would go to all the trouble to inject such a harmless worm in the network.Â Â

About the author

Larissa Anderson is a producer for the Marketplace Tech Report and she also produces Minnesota Public Radio’s Wits.